Hotel review, The Shed, National Theatre

Polly Stenham is the precocious posh girl whose extraordinary first play, That Face, written when she was just 19, was an instant smash both here and on Broadway. Her favourite theme, precocious posh dysfunction, drives the story in Hotel. From the off, the dialogue grabs you by the throat. We have two fabulous precocious and posh children, Ralph and his younger sister, Frankie. And the inevitable damaged parents, Vivienne and Robert, whose exchanges are so thrillingly vicious they induce palpitations, and while I won't spoil things by parroting the lines, I have a perverse longing to one day use them.

Vivienne has just resigned from the cabinet after waking to find her husband's pixellated private parts displayed on the front pages. Robert, unable to explain how he got embroiled in an online affair and snapped his penis for a girl he'd never met, has whisked the family to a villa on an isolated island off the Kenyan coast. Can he save his marriage and his relationship with the kids for whom he gave up his career?  So far, so brilliant, and as the grey areas between father and son are revealed, we hunker down expecting the increasingly complex dysfunction at which Stenham excels. But then Hotel goes a bit wonky as the family, and the writer, are forced out of their comfort zones. 

Suddenly, Nala and Abdi burst in on the space toting guns and making videos and we're in an African hostage situation. These aren't terrorists or pirates however, they're environmentalists, angry at aid deals brokered by Vivienne when she was in government. Nala's arguments are all legitimate but there is no original, clever or witty way to make statements about colonisation, imperialism and the linking of aid to the growth of dangerous cash crops. What we get is righteous rant from a woman who's dressed like an extra from The Help, but is in fact a Londoner who somehow followed the family out there. Stenham's characters are so strong that when at the end she delivers her favoured scenario - young people left alone to face an uncertain future - one almost forgives the strange and unnatural device used to take us there. Almost.

Conclusion: When it works the writing in Hotel is so terrific, that it alone is worth the ticket. The four holidaymakers, Tom Beard, Hermione Gulliford, Tom Rhys Harries and Shannon Tarbet are pitched perfectly. Naomi Dawson's set is fabulous and full of scares and surprises - it works terrifically in the small space at The Shed. 

References

Hotel, Tickets.                           

The Shed, National Theatre, South Bank, London SE1.    Run ends 2 August